Saturday, November 12, 2011

More on the Monarchist League and Bidding Adieu to the Royal Family

I wrote recently of a Liberal Party initiative to limit the role of the monarchy in Canada. It is undemocratic and almost tyrannical, given the strict rules to the rights of ascendancy. Recently, restrictions on women have been removed, but Catholics are still out and of course anyone without "Royal" blood.

However, Canada's Monarchist League is out to give the British Royal family more face time and are attempting to bring back all of the old traditions that promote our WASP heritage. Anathema to French Canadians and First Nations.

The League admits to being behind our 1950s style citizenship guide, the expensive and archaic renaming of our navy and airforce, and the push to have the Queen's picture put back in public places.

In recent years, the Conservative government of Stephen Harper has shown an appreciation for the value of the monarchy and a willingness to restore royal symbols, Rowe said. Under its watch, a new citizenship guide has come out that emphasizes the role of the monarchy and the image of the Crown has been restored to the patch worn by customs officers on their uniforms.

The league attributes this new attitude toward the monarchy in no small part to the arm-twisting, subtle negotiating, public campaigning and persistent pestering of government officials its members have engaged in over the years.

However, many other groups have twisted Harper's arm, so why is he giving this small organization so much say over our culture and how taxpayer money is spent?

It's politics and another opportunity to divide Canadians. He's counting on the silent majority being agreeable to the quaint customs, without looking at the broader implications.

"Monarchist League Getting Younger, More Dynamic, Say Members"

CBC did an in depth piece on the League in July, pointing out the fact that many young people are now joining the tea and crumpet crowd. So I thought I'd take a closer look at this new phenomenon.

These kids are not in this for the sake of tradition, but are just another vehicle for the conservative movement. I've spent a great deal of time studying their American counterparts, like Young Americans for Freedom and Youth for Western Civilization, and their websites are almost identical in theme.

Liberal, "leftie" bashing and the promotion of far-right causes. Look at the photo of William and Kate that goes with the CBC piece. No tea and crumpets there.

On their website, the links to their imperial guides, include the majestic:

- Lew Rockwell, right-wing activist and chairman of the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, that promotes the Confederacy and is deemed to be racist by the Southern Poverty Law Center. "Rockwell and the prominent libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard championed an open strategy of exploiting racial and class resentment to build a coalition with populist paleoconservatives."

- Peter Brimelow - the man who taught Stephen Harper everything he knows about the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon race. His Quebec bashing book The Patriot Game so affected Harper that he went out and bought ten copies to give to friends. (Shut up. I'm pretty sure he does have ten friends). Our young aristocrats even include a quote from the owner of the anti-immigration site V-Dare and self described Paleoconservative: "The attitude of successive governments towards the monarchy is that of the urchin, secretly urinating on some shrub in the hope that it will die." How profound. Picture me swooning. Brimelow is also involved in the white race promotion group Youth For Western Civilization.

Spend a few minutes on their site and tell me if you get a warm and fuzzy feeling. Anything regal jump out at you?

The Monarchist League claims to be non-partisan, but clearly, at least its youth wing, is anything but. It is an indoctrination into far right-wing causes, promoting the Paleoconservative notion of the supremacy of the white race.

I wonder how many of these kids graduated from the Manning Centre for the Destruction of Democracy?

I want Canada to be independent. Canada's neocons are now embracing this movement because it paints them as traditional conservatives, loyal to the Crown. However, Sir John A. fought against too much influence from both Britain and the U.S. His challenges prompted popular cartoons, of a Johnny Canuck kicking the butts of John Bull and Uncle Sam. I tweaked one of them a little.

I expect that these young monarchists will protest the upcoming Liberal convention and the Harperites will create a whole new swath of bumper stickers, suggesting that the Liberals are unpatriotic, hate our navy and air force and want to overthrow the monarchy in a some kind of coup.

2 comments:

I thought all this royalist crap had to have more sinister routes than merely a political distraction. Thanks for pointing out how there are so many right wing factions at play and how they influence Harper's views.

"On their website, the links to their imperial guides, include the majestic"

As I wrote to you before you did not link to the Monarchist League of Canada website (which is http://www.monarchist.ca/) This renders the rest of your post pretty irrelevant.

"These kids are not in this for the sake of tradition"

Funny you can write that without linking to a website for the Young Monarchists (of which there wasn't one in 2011). Their Facebook page is at https://www.facebook.com/groups/YoungMonarchists/ .But to answer your larger point: some are in it for preserving Canadian traditions, some support monarchy because it leads to a better functioning democracy, some have an interest in history, and perhaps some just like all the silly hats(?). Its rather a diverse group.